Saturday, April 4, 2009

I would like to dedicate this post to two great Arabs:Mo-ha-med, the Egyptian blogger who inspired me with his essay on Egypt’s national schizophrenia towards Israel and the late Saddam, the Sword of the Arabs, who continues to nourish my own personal schizophrenia towards the Jewish State from beyond the grave.

If anything, this post should serve as a reminder to my Israeli readers that despite being the most moderate Palestinian they'll ever meet, my perception of Israel and peace with her is built on a sense of pragmatism - or defeatism as some of my Arab brothers could very fairly argue.

We have been fighting you for over sixty years and we keep losing. Our conflict with you, which has been perpetuated thanks to devastatingly stupid decisions on our part has absorbed every single ounce of our energy, and has come at the expense of our own development. Your society is far more advanced than ours in many ways, and at the risk of appearing as an untermensch who has internalised this sense of inferiority, I enviously proclaim that what you have achieved in the last 60 years is far superior than whatever we have accomplished. Verily I say, we have a lot to learn from you.

So, I advocate a two-state solution, recognition of Israel and trade with her. This, I believe in the name of our benefit rather than yours, for despite being an avowed Judeophile, I don't love Israel or Zionism. That would be unnatural.

In fact, Koss Imko

I curse the yeasty vulvas of the mothers of your Israel and your Zionism, neither of which have anything to offer me.

But in the end, you seem to function in the name of your self-interest, something you cannot be blamed for, whereas we Arabs and our leadership, towards whom my animosity knows no bounds, seem to insist on going against my own personal interest - chiefly in the way they have kept the refugee saga alive, like the camps' Brimos burners with unlimited reserves of Arab incompetence for fuel.

Mo-Ha-med's post re-ignited that feeling, and somehow reminded me of how I felt that sweet night when Saddam rained Scuds on Tel Aviv. So hold my hand, and let's take a walk down memory lane...

- - - - -

An older Iraqi joke goes as follows:

Upon spotting a fresh, sizeable mound of human faeces on Baghdad's show-piece Abu Nawas street, a mukhabarat gendarme encouraged the gathering crowd to find the filthy beast who committed such a crime so that he could be swiftly punished.

Within minutes, an older women pushes her way through the mob, sticks her finger in the khara and proceeds to taste it.

"It belongs to our Great Leader Saddam, May Allah protect him!" She proclaimed.

"How do you know?" asked a surprised gendarme.

"We have been putting up with his shit for such a long time that we have come to recognize its unique taste"

- - - - -

The astute observer of our region is quick to deduce that in the Missile East, certain leaders tend to enjoy more popularity among the people of neighbouring states than in their own, for the simple reason that the neighbours get the rhetoric minus the khara. Think of the Arab masses' excitement at Ahmadinejad's anti-Israeli shrieks, or more relevantly to my own life, the Palestinian euphoria when Saddam's scuds hit Tel Aviv in 1991.

No, I wasn't even among the rooftop revellers in the territories but I do remember harassing my father who was glued to CNN at the time. "Baba, baba, how many Israelis died?" I kept asking.

At some point he got impatient with me and sent me to the Abu-Hussam, the neighbourhood's Jerusalemite bakkal (grocer), to buy yoghurt.

That's when the corpulent Abu-Hussam, a man far more patient than my father, nestled my chin in his hand, and described to me the tenderest moment in his life, back in October of 1973 he was taking a shower and his brother barged in, arms flailing, shouting that Syria and Egypt had attacked Israel.

He told me to savour the scuds falling on Tel Aviv, for such moments only occur once every couple of decades. I remember the happiness of the day, a joy only comparable with when I discovered the acute pleasure of masturbation. Incidentally, my lubricant of choice at the time was "Samed", West Bank olive oil that was sold to raise funds for the first intifada. The objects of my onanistic practices were Abu-Hussam's chain-smoking, crotch-scratching Datsun-pick-up driving sons, whom I watched and lusted after as I lurked behind our bathroom's window-mounted fan.

In fact, I firmly believe that my frequent masturbatory sessions of the time were the reason the first intifada lasted as long as it did. The reverse corollary of which is that the intifada floundered due to the serious decline in funding due to my dumping of "Samed" in favour of the water jets at the neighbourhood pool.

- - - - -

Many years later, I praise Allah, for I'm fortunate to live in a city were men's behinds have replaced both masturbation and Saddam's scuds as the chief thrills in my life.

But, if you ask me whether or not a serious and effective missile strike on Tel Aviv today would give me a thrill. I would shout, yes, my arms flailing, from the rooftop.

For while I do accept your state as a reality, and while I do want to be your neighbour and apprentice, the idea of you being humbled every once in a while, has me ejaculating in all directions.